


Starlight on the Bosphorous: A Rumination

by spacehart



Category: Muhteşem Yüzyıl | Magnificent Century
Genre: Afterlife, Implied/Referenced Suicide, this was less depressing than i thought it was going to be
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-03
Updated: 2017-11-03
Packaged: 2019-01-28 17:15:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12611460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacehart/pseuds/spacehart
Summary: After she puts a dagger through her heart, Gevherhan meets with an ancestor who lived and died with a heart very similar to her own.





	Starlight on the Bosphorous: A Rumination

Gevherhan knows her afterlife will not be sweet. She had raged, she had coveted, she had lost faith in those who loved her, and those whom she had loved in return.

Those that she still loved.

But it was hard, so hard, to see her baby sister, draped in sliver and white, lips painted red, while the only red Gevherhan bore was the red rimming her eyes from crying.

And they both wore wedding dresses; they were both glinting in the candlelight. 

And then Gevherhan had put a blade through her heart.

Gevherhan feels as though she is drowning, set adrift in the sea of despair she died in. She does not know how they buried her — what kind of funeral did Murad give her? Did her mother, the effervescently regal Valide, forgive her? She knew the moment she heard her mother’s screams that she had made a mistake, that she would be full of regret and carry those screams in her soul until the end of her days.

A hand wraps around her bicep, tugging her upwards. Water still grabs greedily at her gown, her heavy jewels and veil, but it is no match for the dark hand on her arm, dragging her up, up, and up.

She breaks the surface, gasping mightily, and when she can breathe again, she sees the stars. Bright and bold and dripping with enough light it seems that they are weeping. She forgets the presence beside her and revels in their tears.

Tears for her, she thinks, with a rough, wet laugh escaping her.

A hand tugs on her arm again, this time leading her away from the reverie of the stars. She looks — to her left is a woman, dark skin turned blue by the light of the moon. She’s leading Gevherhan towards a small boat, where a man holds a lantern, swaying gently in the current.

She’s not quite sure where she is now, for though the can pick out the constellations that she could have seen from her bedroom window, she can see no shore, neither city lights nor lights of Topkapi Palace. And it is silent. Utterly silent.

They reach the boat, the woman and she, with both strangers helping to haul a sodden Gevherhan into the boat. The man, she can see, is dressed much like her own brothers, though the fashion is decades out of date. She sees that the hunch of his back is not an intentional one, not a slump, but rather the kind a person is born with. But what strikes Gevherhan is how kind his face looks, how intelligent. Pale eyes glint under candlelight and Gevherhan shivers.

The woman is in the boat now, taking up oars to propel them in a direction that Gevherhan can’t distinguish.

“Are you an angel?” she blurts, reverting to a childhood habit. She looks over her shoulder, towards the woman. “Are you both angels?”

The woman smiles and shakes her head, a tinge of sadness to her expression. Somehow, Gevherhan can see more clearly — there are now more lanterns than the solitary one the man had been holding.

“Her name is Gölge,” the man says. The woman nods in deference, still paddling onwards.

“Thank you, Gölge Hatun,” Gevherhan says, first by rote, then more sincerely, “Thank you.”

Gögle nods again, smiles, then jerks her chin forwards, indicating that Gevherhan should listen to the man sitting in the bow of the boat.

Gevherhan turns forward again, tugging at the tiara still pinned to her hair. She doesn’t care what she rips out; she simply wants the damned thing off.

Her mother’s screams echo again. The stars twinkle brighter.

“Strange, to think that Gölge Hatun saved your mother in much the same way that she just saved you.” The man squints at her and Gevherhan shifts in her seat. “Though it was under quite different circumstances,” he continues. “She was still Mahpeyker, the cariye. Not quite such the formidable Valide she’s grown to be.”

Gevherhan shifts again, this time to lean forward. “You knew my mother?” she pesters, for she is quite sure that this man, and Gölge behind her, are like her —  past the land of the living.

“I did not,” he confesses, “But she wore my mother’s ring and crown.”

Gevherhan’s mind works fast, wheeling away. “You are a şehzade,” she says, “One of Hürrem’s sons.” Only one of them was a hunckback. “ Şehzade Cihangir.” He nods. They watch each other, Gevherhan holding the wedding tiara and veil in her lap now.

“I asked to come back for you,” Cihangir says.

Gevherhan blinks and cannot explain why her eyes grow glassy.

The only sound for a while is Gölge at the oars. Gevherhan looks up, blinking hard.

“Why,” she questions flatly, voice wobbling.

It’s another long stretch of silence before Cihangir answers. “We both died of a broken heart,” he says wistfully, looking upwards, like Gevherhan.

She fancies she can see Silatar’s face traced out in starlight. Then Atike’s, then Murad’s, her mother’s, Ibrahim, Bayezid, Kasim, then her Ayşe and Fatma, who had long married over and over again. Even faces that had long since faded from childhood: Hümaşah, her father, Osman and Mehmed.

The oars have stopped. Gögle is following her lead, searching the starlight. Gevherhan wonders who she is seeing, then turns and sees her great-uncle of so many generations passed doing the same.

Gevherhan looks up again once more. Now, there are only the pinpricks of stars and the darkness between them.

She stands suddenly, rocking the boat. “Where are we?” she asks sharply. She looks to Gölge, who shrugs, then Cihangir, who stand with her, and suddenly the hunch in his back is no more. Gevherhan wonders if she was imagining it — but no, history tells the story of Kanuni’s beloved, sickly son.

She wonders how much perfection there is in the afterlife, and the hands that hold her wedding tiara shake.

In answer to her question, the boat bumps up against a dock that had not been there a moment before. Cihangir throws a rope around a mooring point, tying the boat off, then steps onto the dock and holds a hand out to Gevherhan. There are people waiting on the shore, faces that could be familiar in the light but are cast in mystery in the dark. She takes Cihangir’s hand, then takes her hand back as she goes back to Gölge.

She presents the wedding tiara and veil to Gölge. “Will you throw this in the river for me?” A request, one that will do more for Gevherhan in death than it would have ever done in life.

Gölge nods, letting go of the oars to retrieve the sparkling tiara and pale veil from Gevherhan’s now-steady hands. She lets go.

Gevherhan leans over and wraps her arms around Gölge. “Thank you, Gölge Hatun. Look after my mother.”

It is a final goodbye. She watches them on the dock, until the sound of oars and the blinking lanterns fade away into nothing more than pinpricks of starlight on the Bosporus.

**Author's Note:**

> My first fic on ao3! Come say hi on tumblr, I'm @ starfaells!


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